Gidon shrugged. “Same.”
Yael met my gaze. “Is it safe? Do you trust him?”
I trust you, he’d said, so fiercely. I trusted him too, trusted his support and his steadiness and his openness. “Yes.”
She let out a long breath. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
“I’m going to call him here,” I warned, so as not to startle them, and said his name three times.
He appeared.
Gidon jumped, and Yael’s eyes widened. “Shit,” Stefan said. “Is he always listening?”
“Just when people say my name,” Daziel said. “Or if I’m eavesdropping.”
“Did you add the last part just so we know we’re never safe?” Stefan asked.
Daziel grinned, sharp. “I like to keep people on their toes.”
“Metaphorically, I amveryon my toes,” Stefan said without shifting from the floor.
We carved our latest spell into plywood. In the beginning, Professor Altschuler had attended every attempt, but no longer, not when we’d tried so many and they’d all failed.
We began reading. Daziel passed his magic to me, and I directed it into the spell. It was stronger and more volatile than using neshem, a bonfire instead of a match. It made me nervous but not enough to stop.
The magic gathered and built as we read. It moved through the words easily. We hit the first couple of points where it’d been sticky in the last few iterations—not stopped, but if the spell had been a river, this was where the magic started to get clogged with sticks and logs.
The magic kept going, smooth as silk.
We exchanged cautiously hopeful looks. But we’d gotten this far before, if not so easily. Now we approached the bridge, which we’d changed in this rendition with Gidon’s paragraph swap. We hit the point where we’d been blocked last time, bracing ourselves.
The magic kept flowing.
My tentative hope heightened. My breath came faster, the thump of my heart deeper in my ears. The magic never stopped building. It didn’t plateau, didn’t stick. It kept going.
It flowed through the entire spell. The crescendo built, one we’d never reached before, and the four of us exchanged wide-eyed looks. My legs shook with the effort, and my throat squeezed tight.
Yael held out a hand—hold it—as we reached the final stanza. We dragged the words out, letting the magic build into one final surge. The fragments trembled, their edges fluttering. “ ‘Remember, remember,’ ” we said, our excitement palpable, glancing at each other as though to confirm we were all seeing this. “ ‘Remember when you ran through the grass.’ ”
Slowly, so slowly I thought I might be imagining it out of sheer hope, the fragments began to shuffle. I wanted to stop breathing, but I needed breath to speak, and I needed to speak the spell. “ ‘Remember, remember,’ ” I said, my voice blending into three others. Gidon reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard, and I squeezed back.
“ ‘Now.’ ”
On the final word, the magic swept out of us. The edges of the fragments glowed and started to tremble. Then the golden light bled inward, saturating each fragment until they gleamed like polished coins under the afternoon sun. They lifted off the table, hovering, then began to spin as though whipped up by a tornado. My mouth gaped, my neck craned back, as the fragments formed a frenzied cyclone, their light brightening until I couldn’t make out individual pieces. Then, with a burst so sharp and white, I flinched and closed my eyes, they drifted down like feathers, nestling against each other with clear intent. Each jagged piece aligned with others until they spread out in eight separate scrolls.
For a breath, no one said anything. No one moved.
“Oh my god,” Yael finally said, and I tore my gaze from theparchment—actual parchment, not fragments—to her. Her eyes gleamed with repressed tears. “It worked.”
“It worked,” I repeated, too surprised to say anything original. Something about articulating it made it crack through my stunned surprise. “It—worked. We did it!”
Yael started laughing, and Stefan let out a whoop. Gidon bent in half, hands on his thighs, breathing in and out very quickly.
Then we were all yelling and gasping with relief. I threw my arms around Yael, and after a surprised second, she embraced me in return. The boys piled on until we were all laughing. I caught sight of Daziel hovering on the edges. “Daziel, get in here!”
His eyes widened, true shock in them, but the others weren’t waiting. They opened their arms and pulled him in. Yael was kissing cheeks, including Daziel’s, and Stefan knuckled Gidon’s and Daziel’s heads. Daziel met my gaze across the circle, his own wide and bewildered and filled with an unexpected vulnerability. It hit me in the gut.
The noise must have carried, because a minute later the door scraped open. Professor Altschuler stood there. We fell silent, children before an authoritarian father. Daziel vanished.
